Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14
MAKENZIE
E veryone left and Makenzie was still standing in the damn corner. She didn’t even get to say goodbye. She heard Irish moving around behind her, cleaning up the snacks and toys. After a minute, there was nothing but silence behind her.
She stomped her foot.
No response.
She stomped it again.
Nothing.
Maybe he’d left the room. Maybe he forgot about her and went to bed. Maybe… she peered over her shoulder slowly just as he was reentering the room.
“Come here, princess.” He called to her, opening his arms wide. She ran into them and accepted his hug.
“You made me stand in the corner for hours!” she accused. The corner of his mouth turned up.
“It’s been ten minutes.”
“Nuh uh.” She shook her head. It had been way more than ten minutes.
“Princess, would Daddy lie to you?”
“No.” How quickly she answered the question surprised her. “But maybe you looked at your watch wrong.”
“I didn’t look at my watch wrong.” He reassured her. Taking her by the hand, they walked through the house and into his room. “Arms up.”
“How come?” She asked, suddenly suspicious. Was she about to get another spanking? She reached back and rubbed her butt. It wasn’t sore anymore. So, the books were wrong about that. She definitely didn’t feel her spankings for a long time.
As if he could read her mind, he chuckled. “The soreness is already gone?”
She shook her head no, but when he raised his eyebrows, thought better than to lie to him and changed it to yes. “Yep. But that don’t mean I want another spanking.”
“Did you earn another spanking?” he asked her gently. She thought about it. Had she? She wasn’t especially nice to Trinity tonight, so maybe.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t very nice to my friend.”
“You weren’t. Hands up, princess.” This time, she obeyed. She trusted whatever he was going to do, she earned. She lifted her hands, and he pulled her dress up and over her head. Deftly, he unsnapped her bra and dropped it on top of the dress. Reaching for her hips, he made quick work removing her underwear and bra. Taking her by the hand he led her into the bathroom.
The clawfoot tub was filled to the top with bubbles. Two rubber duckies were floating inside. “In you go. Hold on to Daddy so you don’t slip.”
She was confused. Why was he rewarding her when she’d been naughty? She took his outstretched hand and let him guide her into the warm bath. Settling down into the bubbles, she sighed contently. He pulled over a stool and sat beside the tub.
“What I saw tonight was you reacting from a place of trauma. You’ve gone through a lot and while I’m proud of you for having sought out counseling, I think it would be best if you continue to see someone. If you are comfortable with Paisley or Veronica, I’m sure they can fit you in. If you want someone not connected to us, I can help you find a good match.” Irish dipped a washcloth into the warm water and squirted some lavender scented baby bath on it.
“Do you think I’m crazy?” Makenzie asked in a small voice.
“No, sweetheart. I think you’ve survived something traumatic and now, you react based on traumatic stress. I have a PTSD diagnosis associated with the combat I experienced, and because of that, I see a counselor. One thing I learned pretty early on is people who have experienced traumatic stress have an increase of cortisol. The traumatic memory imprints on the brain and the next time you go through something similar, that memory takes over and survival is the priority. So, how you reacted tonight wasn’t how you would have reacted if you’d never gone through trauma. Learning to cope in these situations when you are triggered will help you and those around you.” He ran the cloth over her shoulders and down her back as he spoke.
“Why didn’t she want to tell me? Did I do something bad to cause her to get spanked? Did I scare her, so she didn’t trust me enough to tell me?” Makenzie asked.
“Baby, Trinity didn’t tell you because her Daddy told her she couldn’t. And she didn’t get spanked because of you, she got spanked for her own actions. You know how your account was hacked?”
“No. I have no idea what you are talking about,” Makenzie said, rolling her eyes. “Duh! How could I forget?”
“Watch the attitude, princess. This is your only warning. I know you are stressed out, but we are going to have a nice conversation or you are going to bed with a sore butt that I promise you will feel tomorrow.”
“Yes, Daddy.” She sensed the seriousness in his tone, he’d had enough. She sighed and leaned back against the back of the tub while Irish continued to rub the washcloth over her body.
“Good girl. Well, they didn’t just post screenshots of your conversations with your LittleLife friends, they also posted videos and pictures of you that you did for your ex.”
No.
No.
This couldn’t be happening.
“Your face isn’t in any of them, but your voice is. Some of them were more graphic than others.”
“What’s that have to do with Trinity?” She whispered. Trinity saw them. She saw videos of Makenzie doing God knows what.
“Trinity got defensive of you and engaged in a word battle with the hacker. She demanded he take them down. She went on a bit of an online rampage, attacking all the people calling you names. In the process, when she told them she knows you personally and talked to you today, they were able to figure out what town you are in, because Trinity has her location on her profile.”
“No! What if he finds me! What if he comes here and?—”
“Take a breath, baby girl. Daddy has you. No one is coming here. You are absolutely safe. You have me and you have an entire club full of protective uncles who aren’t going to let anyone hurt a hair on your head.”
She did, didn’t she? She couldn’t imagine anyone getting past Savage or Arrow, let alone through Irish.
“Is that how come she got a spanking?”
“No, she got the spanking because Lucky told her to not respond to any of it, and she did anyway. She disobeyed her Daddy to defend you.”
“And I called her mean,” Makenzie said, tears welling up in her eyes. “I was awful to her, and she was just trying to be nice!”
“Trinity is going to understand, princess. You can call her tomorrow and talk with her. It’ll be okay.”
“But, what if it’s not? What if she never talks to me again? What if she does what the other girls did and block me and refuse to hear me or answer when I call?”
“That’s trauma brain talking. I want you to take a deep breath and we are going to talk about what is true and what your brain is portraying as true, which are two very different things. Deep breath in. Hold it. Deep breath out. Good girl.”
They took several more breaths together before Irish spoke again, helping her process the situation. By the time she got out of the tub and Irish wrapped her in a soft oversized towel, she felt much better about the Trinity situation.
“We’re not going to have sex tonight, princess,” Irish told her, as he climbed in bed beside her.
“How come?”
“Because tonight, I just want to hold you. I want you to cuddle in the safety of my arms without any expectations, and rest.” After she got comfortable in his arms, he spoke again. “Jay has managed to get the account removed.”
“Huh?” She asked sleepily.
“When you were brushing your teeth, he texted me. He reached out to the LittleLife administrators and due to violations in the terms of service, your account has been completely deleted. Not deactivated, where it can come back up, but deleted for good.”
Makenzie breathed a huge sigh of relief. That didn’t mean there weren’t screenshots out there, and the original videos were still with Joseph, but at least, the account where people’s identities had been doxed, was gone.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, princess?”
“I don’t know why Joseph would have wanted to dox the other girls’ information.”
“I don’t know either, but it’s going to be one of the questions I ask him when we find him.”
“You are going to find him?”
“Yes, sweetheart and when I do, I’m going to make sure he knows you are off limits.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes, baby.”
“I feel bad for them.”
“For who?”
“For the Littles who had their identities doxed.”
“Wait. You feel bad for the women who were awful to you? The women who blocked you just because Jamie said you did something wrong? The ones who took the bastard’s side over their friends after he’d abused her?”
“Yes. Because they are Joseph and Jamie’s victims too. They manipulate and lie and hurt people and convince them lies are truth and truth are lies. But also, even with how mean they were to me, they didn’t deserve to have their lives turned upside down. I know a lot of secrets about them, but in the last couple years, I’ve never betrayed their trust. It’s not my place. If I betray their trust, that makes me as bad as them, right?”
Irish nodded. “I can see what you are saying. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“It’s more than that though, it’s about being able to live with myself. If I talked about the hotel spanking parties, or the illicit affairs, the swindling of people’s money or the way they had fake personas on LittleLife when in reality they were totally different people in real life.”
“Hotel spanking parties?” Irish asked.
“Yep, when the women would spank each other. There’s a lot that goes on because people can’t admit what they really want out of life or have the hard conversations they need to have with their partners. A lot of lying, emotional affairs and even physical affairs. When you have a need, you’ll do anything to fulfill it, especially if your partner says absolutely not and makes you feel dirty for having it.”
“That’s when you need to find a different partner.”
“I agree. That’s how come I didn’t marry Eugene. If I did, I’d be in the same situation as them, living an unfulfilled life. But I don’t think I’d be able to go out and do whatever I wanted behind his back and come home and pretend everything was fine, either. That’s not okay. However, I didn’t make a vow to their spouse, and their personal relationships are between them, not me and them. People are allowed to have their privacy.”
“They are. Jay is super strict about privacy at The Citadel. I’m sure there are people who are members there who have spouses at home who believe they are at work conferences when they are attending a BDSM play party. Princess, promise me if there is ever a need of yours that I am not meeting, you will talk to me about it, not go behind my back and get it fulfilled elsewhere.”
“I promise, Daddy.”
Irish squeezed her harder. “Trust and confidentiality are a huge part of this lifestyle.”
“I know being doxed is a risk you take by having profiles on websites, especially if you use your photos and give people your personal information, but I wasn’t the one to violate that trust. At one point I thought, dang, if I’m going to be blamed for so much, maybe I should give them a reason to hate me, but I couldn’t do it. It’s not in my character.”
“I’m dang proud of you, princess. It takes a lot of courage to go through what you’ve been through and not lash out or seek justice.”
“Sometimes, I think they bullied me so much and blocked me the way they did to protect themselves. Other times, I realized, by making me out to be a terrible person, if I did say anything, they’ve discredited me in advance. Once they finished slandering me, my word wasn’t worth a thing. No one would believe me anyway. Even then, I kept their secrets.”
“That’s a fear led trauma response in itself,” Irish said. “It’s also a classic move a narcissist makes. Control the narrative, paint the victim out to be the perpetrator. If she’s crazy, no one will believe her when she says I abused her.”
“The truth is, while I had information that I could have used against them, I never wanted to hurt any of them. I never wanted to break their trust or tell their secrets. I never stopped caring about any of them, even after everything happened. I just wanted to live peacefully.”
“Mature adults would have let that happen. But mature adults would have talked things through and worked them out instead of mass deleting and blocking you from all forms of communication,” he said.
“Honestly, Daddy, I reacted to them kind of like I reacted to Trinity tonight, maybe bigger. Because I was battling healing from the hospital and I was so weak physically and to top it off, I couldn’t figure out which way was up from which way was down. I definitely wasn’t nice in my reactions. They didn’t take the time to see any of it though, I think some of them reacted from their own past traumas, too. I know several had childhood traumas around rejection and abuse. My reactions likely triggered theirs.”
“One of the reasons I run the camp, is because what happens in a person’s childhood can adversely affect them in adulthood. Trauma, no matter when it happens, if not treated, can impact a person’s reaction to everything around them. Learning to communicate affectively is something I wish more people spent time doing.”
“I agree. I think the continued drama was never about me, either. It was about discrediting me so if I ever changed my mind, they had full deniability. It’s like swimming in a pool during a storm. You don’t know if you are wet from the pool or the rain, all you know is you are soaked, and the water is coming from all directions. They keep wanting to punish me over and over, but why? I’ve kept their secrets close to my chest, their real names, their children’s names, their addresses, their professions. I haven’t told their spouses, bosses, or their parents about their secret lives, and I never will. What good would it have done? I would then have proven them right about me.”
“At the end of the day, you have to live with yourself and your actions. No one else’s.” Irish said. “As your Daddy, I hold you accountable for what you do, what you say. Like Lucky did with Trinity. She didn’t get spanked for anything you did, she got spanked for disobeying her Daddy. When you lay your head down at night, you have to live with the choices you made. Did you spread light and life into the world or darkness and drama?”
“Exactly. That’s how I feel, too. I want to be the light in the world, adding positivity, not pain and darkness. And, as you could see from the doxing that happened on LittleLife by whoever hacked my account, I could have burned their worlds to the ground a long time ago. But I didn’t. Not because I’m scared of the drama or the backlash, what more could they possibly do to me? No, because everyone is allowed to have secrets and who they choose to tell those secrets to, is a very personal and private decision. I’m glad Jay was able to get the account taken down. They hurt me, but I’ll never heal by hurting them back. If I dwell on them and the pain they caused, I’m just tearing off the scab over and over again. I think, Daddy, I’ve forgiven all of them, including Jamie and Joseph. I know you won’t let them hurt me again.”
“No, baby girl, I’m going to make damn sure they never hurt you again.”